(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a performance testing apparatus of a fuel cell, and more particularly, to a performance testing apparatus of a fuel cell that enables of testing a performance while maintaining an activation state of the fuel cell.
(b) Description of the Related Art
In general, a fuel cell includes an electrode for generating an electrochemical reaction with a fuel and an oxidizer, a polymer electrolyte membrane for transferring protons generated by the reaction, and a separator (commonly called a “separation plate”) for supporting the electrode and the polymer electrolyte membrane. The fuel cell includes a unit cell of an individual unit, to obtain high potential, the unit cell may be stacked by a required number of the potentials.
Further, in a manufacturing process for producing a membrane-electrode assembly including an electrode and a polymer electrolyte film of the fuel cell, a failure detection of the membrane-electrode assembly is limited to a surface testing by a vision. Therefore, before stacking the unit cells into the completion stack, an evaluation method of the performance of the unit cells is incomplete. For the performance testing of the unit cells, a reaction fluid is supplied to the unit cell, and it is necessary to maintain an activation of the unit cell, in the related art, after assembling the stack by stacking the unit cells, the activation state of the unit cells is maintained and the performance testing is executed.
The activation maintenance and the performance evaluation of the fuel cell are performed by different methods for each manufacture of the fuel cell, however the main method includes driving the unit cells during a substantial period of time under a predetermined voltage. Additionally, the activation maintenance and the performance evaluation process of the fuel cell according to the related art includes supplying the reaction fluid of the fuel and an oxidant to the unit cells of the stack and applying the electrical energy generated in the unit cells to an electronic load after manufacturing the stack of which the plurality of the unit cells are stacked and engaged. However, since the process of the activation maintenance and the performance evaluation of the fuel cell is executed after assembling the unit cells into the completion stack, this process is inefficient in aspects of cost and time.
The above information disclosed in this section is merely for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.